There is an increasing interest to derive compounds from biomass that may be used as fuel components in gasoline, jet fuel, or diesel fuels. For instance, ethanol is currently produced at large scale as a fuel component for gasoline. Ethanol is presently allowed to be blended into gasoline at a maximum of ten percent of the volume of the resulting gasoline fuel. Higher concentrations of ethanol are likely to cause corrosion issues for vehicles that were not designed for high ethanol fuels such as E85 (eighty-five percent ethanol and fifteen percent hydrocarbon based gasoline). Most gasoline fuel sold in the US includes ethanol.
Biomass may be converted to other materials that are suitable for blending with gasoline fuel, but the cost, efficiency and productivity of systems for producing other blending components have yet to prove satisfactory. Indeed, the US government has been offering renewable energy credits to offset the excess cost of producing such blendstocks. However, the renewable energy credits are designed to diminish over time and there is considerable reluctance to invest in technology that must rely on government support to obtain any profit and even require government support to pay off the cost of the investment. The politics surrounding the production of fuel, even fuels that are envisioned as environmentally beneficial, are uncertain. What is desired is an economical process for converting biomass to fuel or fuel blendstock that profitable without any government or other subsidy.